The present invention relates to devices for cleaning operating room instruments. During the course of performing a surgical procedure, many of the instruments used by the surgeon, such as electrocautery tips, suction tips, bipolar tips, become coated with coagulum, particles of tissue and the like. Also, the bores of the suction tips tend to become clogged due to the accumulation of material. In practice, the surgeon in most instances hands an instrument which has accumulated debris or is clogged to an assistant who cleans the instrument with a gauze sheet or the like and returns it to the surgeon. In some instances, a surgeon is able to clean some of the instruments by rubbing them against a sandpaper type pad, which is secured to the operating table, a drape or some other accessible area.
It has also been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,087,878 to provide a device for cleaning surgical knives in the form of a setose member having upstanding setae mounted within a housing having elongated slots. This cleaning member is used by surgeons to clean knives by inserting the knives through the slot and rubbing it against the setae.
Each of these methods for cleaning operating room instruments is subject to one or more serious drawbacks. In the first place, in a procedure in which the surgeon is required to hand off the operating instrument to an assistant for cleaning, extra time is required as opposed to an arrangement in which the surgeon can quickly clean his own instruments. Moreover, when instruments are interchanged between a surgeon and an assistant, there is always a possibility that the assistant will return a different instrument to a surgeon, for example, a suction tip of a different size. This can have quite deleterious results.
Another difficulty with cleaning devices such as a sandpaper pad or the setose member mounted within a slotted housing is that these devices are not effective for cleaning out the interior of suction tubes.